Establishing an Endpoint

Internet2 Higher-Education Members

Researchers at Internet2 higher education member institutions who wish to collaborate using ION should first contact their campus network organization for support. The campus network team can then determine if their institution has an “enabled” link to an Internet2 Connector or other regional network. If their Internet2 Connector does not yet have a physical connection to ION, the Connector can submit a request using the process outlined above.

Initial Connections

The first step to take advantage of ION service is to interconnect with the Internet2 ION infrastructure via a 1GigE or 10GigE Ethernet connection. The logistics of that connection will be handled as part of the turnup process.

How Can Internet2 Members Determine if They Are ION-enabled?

The current ION service uses the Internet2 Juniper infrastructure and any can create a Layer 2 MPLS LSP to any site physically connected to the Internet2 IP backbone.

Required Topology Info

Your VLAN to this endpoint to dedicate to connecting to the other site.

Your partner site's endpoint's name

The VLAN that your partner site is dedicating to connecting to your site.

Creating the Circuit

If you know the other endpoint's ION name, creating a circuit is straightforward. Click the 'Reserve Circuits' tab, and fill out appropriate values. Things to know:

"source" tab:

Description: put something meaningful and unique here, in case the first test fails, though the ION ID is also unique

Source: your campus's ION endpoint. It would be similar to bbn.bost.dcn.internet2.edu

"destination" tab:

Destination: the other endpoint's ION name. If you don't already know this you may be able to browse for a reasonable name

"time" tab: change these values to make the circuit good for the length of time you need; 1 hour isn't very useful

"bandwidth" tab: as appropriate though keep this as small as possible.

"vlan" tab:

Unclick "Same VLAN number on source and destination"

The source VLAN will be the VLAN you've provisioned to your endpoint for this connection. Usually this will be a "Tagged" VLAN. (i.e. dot1q)

The destination VLAN should be whatever you agreed on with the remote site. The tagging status is also whatever is appropriate for them (probably also tagged)

extending an ION circuit

It's possible to "extend" the reservation of existing ION circuits. Do this by clicking on "View/Edit" for the circuit in question and then enter the circuit's new expiration date and time.

Note the "cancel" button in the "view circuits" screen means canceling, i.e. de-provision, the circuit. this does not cancel the edit request and take you back to the screen listing the ION circuits.

VLAN Translation

ION can do VLAN translation as mentioned in above. ION will provide VLAN translation automatically if the "Same VLAN number on source and destination" is unchecked; the two VLAN ID's do not need to be equal.